


A Fatherly Phenomenon

by ExploretheEcccentricities



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Character Death, Death, Fighting, Gen, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Impalement, Swear Word, Whump, a lot of blood, cursing, did I mention death?, medical inaccuracy, no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25042819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExploretheEcccentricities/pseuds/ExploretheEcccentricities
Summary: Eugene finds himself reeling.A more gore-y and depressing take on the season 3 finale. Takes place during Eugene and Edmund's fight against the Brotherhood in Plus Et En Vous.(If you're having a good day you probably shouldn't be reading this.)
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider & Varian
Comments: 35
Kudos: 96





	A Fatherly Phenomenon

**Author's Note:**

> No, I have no regrets. Yes, I'm insane. Yes, I love Eugene, Quirin, and Varian. No, I have no regrets.  
> Also, Edmund isn't mind-controlled and they don't go for the Mindtrap because plot. This was meant to be a one-shot, anyways.

Eugene finds himself reeling from the burden of fighting his father's 'friends,' stealing a quick glance at how Edmund is faring before being drawn back to the fight at hand.

He grunts as he swiftly dodges yet another quick blow from Hector. The man was too fast, too sharp, too accurate in every strike, swing, and swipe that it was nearly impossible to coordinate with his movements and properly think of a way to fend off his attacks.

He remembers Edmund making a sheepish comment about how they had been trained by the best.

From the corner of his eye, Eugene can see Edmund pushing against an equally enraged Quirin, the two men of such similar build and strength that Eugene would have been hurled across the room had he not heard Edmund’s cry of warning.

Eugene gasps as a blurry flash of grey skims through his line of sight before he finds himself having rolled away just in time for Quirin to throw himself in his direction with a battle cry.

Scrambling as best as he can with a sore leg and a stunned mind, Eugene instinctively brings his sword forward, clashing it with Quirin’s pitchfork in the nick of time. Alarmed and dizzy from the surge of unsaddled adrenaline coursing through his veins with every powerful pulse, Eugene calls out for his own father, feeling already overwhelmed as his feet begin to lose their secure hold on the ground with the sheer force of Quirin’s every push. Sparing a quick glance, he watches Edmund get kicked down by Hector, and Hamuel flying away from another bearcat. Quirin continues to press his weight into where they are struggling for dominance, and Eugene suddenly realizes that he is waiting for him to double over, to be properly overpowered before he can swiftly and quickly take advantage of his one minute of weakness.

The man-not Quirin, not Varian’s father, not the humble village leader of Old Corona-the warrior, the knight, quite possibly his murderer, looms over him with his oppressive weight, every infuriated growl blustering breath in his face, every wordless cry animalistic and unrestrained with ardor.

Before the true panic of the circumstance can sink its sharp fangs into his gut, Eugene finds himself locked at the bright blue eyes-soulless, unconscious, sleeping eyes clouded with a blissful mist and unhesitant in what they are about to do. Eugene wonders who watches his struggle, his panic, his pain through those eyes at this moment. Was it Quirin, the father of a boy for whom he had come to care about deeply and truly? Was it Cassandra, a woman he had once considered a close sister? Or was it Zhan Tiri, the demon that had repeatedly threatened to sweep the love of his life into the cold, endless chasms of ancient magic forever?

Steeled with new resolve, Eugene pushes every ounce of strength left in his being against whoever it is this man has become, whoever it is that dares to harm those he loves and protects, whoever it is that will take satisfaction in watching him fall and leave his kingdom undefended. His kingdom, his family, his friends.

“You don’t want to do this, Quirin.” Eugene hoarsely insists, trembling as his weakened limbs begin to give out against Quirin’s unmoving force. “You know you had been willing to leave all this behind. You have a greater loyalty now, a greater life and a greater purpose now. You have Varian now. There is nothing that can make you lose all of that-not the moonstone, not the Mindtrap, not Zhan Tiri herself. Not if you are willing to fight for it. Fight for him. Fight for Varian.” Steeling himself, he tries to lean forward as close as he can, trying to reach into the glowing eyes for the man that had thanked Eugene for befriending his son, the man that so readily encompassed him into his arms when he had brought Varian back home from his kidnapping, the man that had silently and gratefully placed a proud hand on his shoulder when he apologized to him for not supervising Varian during the Rooster fiasco. “ _Your son, Varian._ ”

The light in Quirin’s eyes shines brightly for a few more seconds, before dimming and flickering only slightly. The eyes blink and narrow, the brows furrowing, the small creases in his face tightening painfully as a faint pink speckles across his cheeks and forehead, the bared sneer weakening under the strain of a frightful yet fleeting lucid moment. For a moment, Eugene watches with grotesque fascination as Quirin momentarily battles himself-the father inside the knight, the farmer inside the warrior, the man inside the puppet adorned with metal armor, his heart securely locked away and his mind frozen under siege, battling for agency, for some semblance of control, some sliver of memory or realization or reality to anchor him in the abyss of mindless pushing and swinging and fighting. The veins along his temple and neck pop out in gruesome clarity against the rest of his pale, sweating skin, and Eugene nearly breathes a sigh of relief as the force applied on his sword falters for a bit.

Alas, it doesn’t last.

The man-the warrior, the beast-returns, emerges angrier and stronger and more resilient than before. It has beaten down the resisting father and it is intent on beating down Eugene. A gruesome, ugly roar erupts from the unfamiliar man as the world blossoms into a blur of colors and shapes.

Eugene opens his eyes, his heart pounding in his ears when he finds himself dazed and flat against the ground. He barely manages to lift a part of himself up before Quirin’s figure is suddenly getting closer than it should be, his eyes brighter than they should be, his pitchfork raised higher and steadier and readier than it should be. The man is running towards him.

Heart leaping into his throat and limbs reeling from the throw, Eugene instinctively, unthinkingly holds his sword out, one of his feet swinging out of his own accord as he makes to scramble and get as far away from the perfect aim as possible. He blinks, though perhaps his eyes had intended to close, knowing what was about to inevitably occur.

A faint thud against his boot slivers into his ears, followed by the sharp zing of metal and a sickeningly loud squelch. The sword in his handle trembles under an inexplicably heavy weight, almost bending out of his grasp had he not quickly clasped it with two hands. Eugene opens his eyes, wondering why he hasn’t felt any pain. All breath leaves him when he finally sees it.

There, directly above Eugene, with the the captain’s sword protruding through the center of his chest all the way to his back, hangs Quirin the father, the farmer, the leader of Old Corona.

His eyes are as wide open as his mouth, the deep and conscious brown orbs flooded with a sparkling sheen of moisture that drips onto Eugene’s face, the open jaw allowing for the steady trickle of blood down his chin as he gurgles and struggles to speak. Quirin's face is unspeakably pale, drained of all color as his body writhes weakly and twitches once, like an animal that had just been decapitated.

Eugene finally collects himself and cries out breathlessly, his own voice captured and captive in his chest as his heart furiously, frantically tries to ward off the first seeping, weeping slivers of horror through the nauseatingly numb mask of incomprehension his stunned mind charges throughout his entire being. He tries to gasp for breath as Quirin does, hands still trembling under the weight of what they have done, unsure and uncomprehending and unable to do anything more for any longer.

He finally manages to brace his hand against what is left of the man’s chest to pull part of the tip out, vaguely remembering not to remove the whole thing lest the man bleed to death. Another part of him knows it won’t change the inevitable, yet nothing will ever be the same again.

As soon as part of Eugene’s sword recedes from Quirin’s back, the man begins to fall backwards, and Eugene scrambles to catch him, instantly forgetting that it is his sword that had skewered the man’s chest, his sword embedded so deeply into the man’s flesh, his sword that has brought this man’s unjust and unneeded end.

Quirin’s head rolls back limply, body quivering and chest heaving for every strangled breath it can squeeze out, the wheezes quieting despite their initial distress and the deep red rivulets of blood spurting out at an alarmingly rapid rate from the edges of the ruptured hole that has severed his vessels and greedily drain his heart with every passing second.

Eugene’s hands hover and flit uncertaintly, finally settling to hold the man’s face in his blood-stained gloves, his thumb grazing the jutting cheekbones, his eyes locked on the tear-glazed yet ever-conscious, ever-present, ever-awake eyes, so close to an eternal sleep.

Then, the trembling lips stretch across his bloodstained face into a careful, slow, agonizing smile, coughing as more blood pools up through his orifice. “Take-" Quirin heaves another choked gasp, the speckles of ruby red blood landing on Eugene’s face, and the captain tries to turn the man’s face in the hopes that he’ll be able to breath. Instead, with all of the might left in his body, Quirin brings his hand to his mouth, tears off the glove with his teeth, and clasps his bare, cold hand as strongly as he can to Eugene’s hand, locking eyes with him in confidence and an eerie, irrefutable sense of calm. “Take…care of my boy.” He breathes, he gasps, he chokes. “Don’t…leave him…alone…again.” Quirin rasps then, an ugly and retching sound from a man that had once towered so surely over him like a mountain. “Tell everyone to…f-forgive me for not being strong enough. Tell Varian-“ He inhales deeply, shakily, a strangled groan of agony escaping his mouth as more blood rushes in. Spitting it out, he gasps and speaks again with a renewed determination. “Tell Varian that I am proud of him, and that I love him.” Eugene stares at the man’s awake, alive eyes for the last time, memorizes every trace of eyes that had glistened when pleased and lowered when angered and shone brightly for a boy he had now robbed of his only family. Eugene, a man who had found and made his family when he had nothing, had now taken everything from a boy he had condemned to a life like his own.

Then Quirin’s head drops back, his hand going limp and falling to his side, and he gasps again as deeply as he can. Though how the rest of his body has relaxed and accepted his fate, his eyes still stare at the ceiling, wide open and lucid and awake, glistening with a foreign sentiment, emotion, purpose that Eugene does not try to fathom. Eugene watches from where he is seated, not daring to come into Quirin’s line of sight again, for the last thing he wishes to do is disgrace the man’s last moments alive with the image of his murderer.

“Varian.” Quirin whispers to no one, his voice broken and cracked and destroyed beyond repair. It is breathless with some realization, alight with an indiscernible emotion, a wistful fondness as though he is imagining the face of his son hovering over him and holding him in his final moments on earth. “My lovely son, Varian.”

Quirin-father of Varian, leader of Old Corona, advisor to King Edmund, knight of the Brotherhood of the Dark Kingdom-breathes his last.

The captain, the murderer, the defender of Corona, stares at the body, bringing his trembling hand over the glazed, lifeless eyes but stopping himself before he can close them. His mind races and his body freezes, still numb and petrified from shock as he struggles to make sense of what has just happened.

Eugene has no warning when Edmund uses Hector’s moment of stunned silence to his advantage and hurtles the man across the room, the back of his head slamming against the wall as he falls unconscious with a pained grunt.

Eugene has no warning when Edmund runs past him, not having seen any of what had just occured, and pulls the lever.

Eugene has no warning when Varian flies out of the newly bustling portal, shaking his head groggily and bringing his hand to his face to steady himself.

Only, of course, to be struck by the scene in front of him.

All color flees from Varian’s face, his body stiffening and his breath sharply swallowed away by the utter shock, the uncomprehending yet completely apprehending magnitude of what he thinks has happened.

Eugene hopes Varian will faint at the sight of the blood. By God, if there was any time to faint, it should be now.

But Varian - weathered, stronger, steeled, unfaltering Varian, so familiar to and yet so dismissive of his own pains - instead rushes towards them in quick, discordant strides, sliding to his knees as they buckle once near the body, unwilling to withstand the crushing and unrelenting weight of the slowly seeping, slowly building, slowly realized horror that seizes and consumes the child.

Eugene wisely keep his hands to himself, turning his face away so he does not crush what is left of his withered heart at the sight of Varian’s eyes widening as they avidly absorb the sight of the paled skin and the greying eyes and the deep red blood staining anything and everything. In the background, he can hear shocked cries and screams of horror from the others who have emerged from the portal, though Varian gives no indication of hearing them. The boy’s hands cautiously hovering over the large, still chest, his breath still faltering and speech still failing him as he sharply sucks in another attempt to faint. Varian’s hands tremble too much when he tries to forcefully wrench his gloves off, quickly running his free fingers over where he thinks the carotid artery is, the other bare hand resting with its palm flat over Quirin’s tear-stained, blood-stained cheek. He leans in close, his wide eyes still unfathomable, still uncomprehending, still locked on his father’s eyes, searching for anything-for Quirin the father, Quirin the farmer, perhaps even Quirin the warrior. Eugene thinks he sees Varian’s lips move from the corner of his eyes as he struggles to avoid eye contact, but he cannot hear a thing, over the ringing and pounding and screaming in his own ears. When Varian finds nothing in the eyes he has looked up to all his life, his breath hitches, breaking away his wistful gaze for his eyes to flit across every inch of the body as they finally settle on the still erect sword, and then to Eugene’s morose countenance.

Upon feeling the reposeful weight of Varian’s eyes burning into him, Eugene finally steels himself and looks up to meet them, only to wish for the life of him that he hadn’t. For Eugene finds himself speechless.

Not even a second passes when their eyes lock before Eugene witnesses the realization, the knowledge, the sheer and unbridled force of reality hit Varian like an unforgiving wave. The boy reels back, eyes immediately filled to the brim with tears as his face reddens and his jaw drops. Finally, a breath is sucked in, and the silence breaks, Finally, Eugene breaks along with him.

A small, startled cry escapes the boy as his eyes return to the blood that still trickles down his father’s open mouth, a weak and hoarse and unsure cry strained with the weight of his tears. Then, Varian gasps again, a deeper breath as he slowly tries to bring his shaking hands to his face. They do not reach it in time before the first scream escapes-the most heart-wrenching, harrowing, haunting scream Eugene has ever heard in his life. It erupts from the tormented soul like a siren, searing like a scalding knife into Eugene’s own heart with unbridled agony, ringing through its chambers and furiously yanking out the thread of the deathly silence sown in his ears. It resonates through him somehow, and he is still reeling from it when the second scream comes, and then the third, and then the fourth. Eugene watches as Varian single-handedly wrenches the sword out and throws it with a sharp clatter next to Eugene, tears the chest plate off, throws himself onto his father’s chest, and buries his head against it, as though screaming at the silenced heart will elicit it to awaken again, a child hoping that their parent will answer their pained cries one last time.

The bouts of screams take their turns impaling Eugene like he did to the father, the farmer, the man he had slaughtered. Grieving, furious, sorrowful, desperate screams, broken only by breathless sobs and relentless whimpers and a jumbled mix of incomprehensible words that refuse to stop skewering and poking and running him through in the chest, in the gut, in the throat as he sits there, hateful that he breathes when he robbed this man of such a luxury, hateful that he was slowly being surrounded by his friends when he robbed this child of his family.

The screams do not stop, even as Varian’s voice begins to weaken and crack with dryness and exhaustion, even as his breaths falter and begin to choke with his intermingled sobs, even as he turns his face against the chest and Eugene spots the blood- _Quirin’s blood_ staining Varian’s face as it stained his own. Eugene looks down-at his once pristine white gloves, the jacket he had so cautiously buttoned on both dreading and questioning the responsibility he would have to carry with it-and looks away from the bloody clothes, the bloody body, the bloody boy.

Then the ground begins to shake violently and chunks of the ceiling begin to fall apart.

The people around him cry out in surprise, and Eugene faintly hears Lance call out for everyone to leave. Without thinking, Eugene reaches out his hand and places it on Varian’s arm.

Varian flinches away as though singed to the bone, locking him with an accusatory, agonizing grimace that pins Eugene to his feet when he had been braced to run. “No!” Varian shrieks at the top of his lungs with all of the broken voice and broken soul he has left. “No, don’t come near him! Don’t touch him!”

“Kid, we have to leave. We’ll be crushed.” Eugene tries to insist urgently.

Varian shakes his head, tears still cascading down his pink cheeks. “I won’t leave him! I won’t!” He brings his father's bare, limp hand to his lips, closing his eyes and flinching when he hears another block of ceiling fall near them.

“Varian!” Eugene raises his voice, grabbing him forcefully by the shoulders and making him face his father’s murderer. “He’s _gone_. He wanted me to take care of you! We have to _go_!”

Varian stares at him in utter bewilderment, eyes still glazed and fixed on his own, before they blink. “You… you _murderer_!” Varian tries to scream, pushing at him roughly as the sheer conviction in his voice rebounds. Varian’s tear-filled eyes glare up at Eugene, as though trying to reach in and strangle him for all of the silent questions, accusations, insults and answers coursing painfully through his befuddled mind. “You _fucking_ _monster_!”

Eugene-the monster, the friend, the murderer, the new father- finds that he has seen enough death for one day. He instantly, harshly, roughly throws both arms around Varian’s entire torso and physically hauls him off of the body, dragging the screaming and sobbing and writhing boy, with all of his feeble scratches and futile kicks and flailing arms and endless string of curses, further away from the death he had been willing to resign himself to, the death for which his father’s last words would have died in vain.

Eugene’s ears ring from Varian’s screams and Quirin’s silence and the quickly crumbling palace ceiling and his slowly crumbling sanity.He does not dare to look back as Quirin’s body disappears in the rubble and mist of falling debris, buried in pieces and yet finally at peace. He does not look forward when he finally reaches the courtyard outside, allowing the broken boy to slip from his grasp at last. He does not look up as Varian grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, shaking him and hitting him and pushing him. He does not look down as Varian the inventor, the friend, the child genius, the orphan sinks to the ground before him, taking Eugene with him, doubling over with his hands clasped to his face and his figure still wracking with sobs.

Eugene faintly registers the rustling of Edmund’s cloak as he crouches down next to him, carefully wrapping the cloak around the two broken souls so that the murderer can embrace the child he orphaned in peace, as though attempting to shield them away from the world that will so readily throw them into chaos but a moment later.

Faintly, he can hear the cackles of an ancient demon reawakened, feel the faint panic at the thought in the back of his mind that Rapunzel had quite possibly lost, the terrified cries of his friends depending on him to come up with a battle plan.

But in this very moment, Eugene Fitzerherbert- a captain, a murderer, a reformed thief, a friend, a monster- finds himself reeling from the burden of being the father he stole for a friend he stole from, before being drawn back to the fight at hand.

**Author's Note:**

> No one: ...  
> Absolutely no one: ....  
> Me: …Don’t let his slim, sinewy figure fool you. Eugene can definitely hold a dead body thrice his weight on a sword for 10 seconds. M̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶d̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶d̶o̶p̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶’̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶t̶h̶e̶r̶.̶


End file.
